Bust of a Young Woman

In 1908 almost nobody was buying Modigliani. One man was: Paul Alexandre, a young doctor who rented out a half-derelict house on the rue du Delta in Paris where poor artists could work, and who took canvases off him a few francs at a time. That spring Modigliani showed in public for the first time, six pictures at the Salon des Indépendants, and only some of the six can still be identified today. This painting belongs to that year and to Alexandre, who kept it for decades. The handling is heavy and direct, the neck barely lengthened, the eyes still carrying pupils, which is not how most people picture a Modigliani. In 1946 he traded it to the collector Roger Dutilleul in exchange for another Modigliani, a portrait of the sculptor Maurice Drouard.